


Bullies

by Anonymous



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bullying, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Extremely Dubious Consent, Gaslighting, HTP adjacent, HYDRA Trash Party, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, MCU trash meme, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-HYDRA Reveal, SHIELDRA, Steve Rogers Is Not Okay, Strike Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-06-14 22:13:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15398634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Written for theMCU trash meme prompt:I wanna see Steve being messed with by his secretly-HYDRA coworker buddies. I want them generally fucking with him, "accidentally" doing terrible things to him or getting Steve into awful situations, telling jokes that aren't really jokes, gaslighting, performing sexual-assault hazing under the guise that "that's what people do now," pressuring him into other sex shit, anything, just fuck Steve up.Steve isn't failing to fully catch on because he's dumb or oblivious: it's just that he is Steve, so he wants to believe the best of everybody, and he doesn't want to believe that he could be working for/with bullies and that (as Natasha says) he essentially died for nothing.





	1. Chapter 1

 

Until the weird stuff starts, nothing about the evening is a surprise.

It’s extremely strange, yes, but not a surprise. Steve had started hearing jokes and comments about his  _anniversary celebration_  almost from the day he had joined the STRIKE team. The mysterious and vaguely threatening events of this anniversary would occur, is what he’d picked up from these jokes, and then after that Captain America wouldn’t be the new guy anymore, would finally be one of the team. Never mind that Steve is technically already the  _leader_  of that team, and has been since he joined. The rules concerning this apparently count just as much for Steve as they do for anyone, and he respects that. 

The rest of it? He doesn't respect as much. Steve had known of similar “celebrations” from his time in the Army, had picked up stories even before he joined: men initiating a new recruit by ganging up on him and roughing him up, or forcing him to drink stupidly large amounts of alcohol, or both, or more. Steve, because of his size or his unusual recruitment or both, had managed to sidestep that bullshit, and in his opinion had not missed out on a goddamn thing, because the whole concept makes him uncomfortable. Not because Steve wouldn’t be able to handle it—of course he could, it’d be a walk in the park—but because it seems like the type of thing that might come from the type of organization that Steve does not want to be a part of.

But the others on the team were all so on board with the idea when they joked about it with each other, were so  _enthusiastic_  about it even, and they are all good guys; Steve knows that from experience by now. If the other men’s hints about it had suggested that this ritual is more involved and elaborate than anything he’d heard of back in his day, well, that is something Steve just has to accept, just like he'd accepted that people don't use handkerchiefs anymore, that they consume drinks that have been dyed a weird blue color. That is the way things are in the world Steve has woken up in, and he has to shut up and play along. 

There is a lot of shutting up and playing along in Steve’s life now.

It takes until the morning before it happens for him to figure that the “anniversary” part of the celebration must not be literal, or else it’s decided according to a system he isn’t privy to: it has not yet been a year since Steve joined STRIKE, but it’s been well over a month. Maybe they’re counting according to a certain number of missions, or other milestones? Steve doesn’t know, and asking will reveal just how many of those missions have blended into each other in his head into a big grey blur, so he keeps his mouth shut about it. 

It’s still not a surprise, in any case, because before anything actually happens there is a very long day of obvious innuendo during meetings and training, of smiles and winks and hard claps on the back, until he is tired of the whole thing before it starts. Steve has made up his mind to play along, though, so when Barnett and Rollins intercept him in the basement parking lot while he’s on his way to his bike, he just raises his eyebrows. 

The two men greet him with knowing smiles, and then turn him around and lead him to the southwest corner of the parking lot. One of the unmarked vans STRIKE sometimes uses to transport personnel is there, its engine already idling. 

“Giving you a lift today, Cap,” Rollins says, voice so friendly that Steve wonders if they might honestly think Steve doesn't already know what's happening, and whether he’s supposed to go along with it and act innocent. 

“So glad I got to be here,” Barnett adds from Steve's other side, squeezing his arm through his leather jacket. “We had to draw straws, y'know. The others’ll miss you.”

Steve still isn’t sure how to reply, so he deals by not saying anything, just smiles tightly and lets the two of them walk him to the van, Rollins close to his height and with a hand on his back, Barnett barely reaching his shoulders and with his hand still on Steve’s arm. Steve ignores the weight in his stomach, the tension he already feels across his shoulders and upper back. He doesn't feel threatened, of course, and he’s not sure why he feels this way. He goes along with a hell of a lot of stuff these days, after all, and this shouldn't be too much worse.

The van’s front passenger door opens as they approach, and Rumlow grins at Steve as he climbs out. Behind him, Cooke is sitting in the driver seat, one hand resting on the wheel. He doesn't smile.

Still, Steve feels a bit of the tenseness go out of his shoulders when he sees Rumlow: Rumlow, at least, will keep things reasonably sensible without Steve having to pull rank if things get out of line. He's good at that. Steve waits as the STRIKE team's former leader opens the sliding door on the side of the van with a bang. “Hop in," he says to Steve. "Back row.”

Barnett jabs Steve with one hand between his shoulderblades, which is annoying: Steve was about to get in the van anyway. He doesn’t need to be pushed. Do they think they could keep Steve here if he wasn’t letting them?

Whatever. He climbs up into the van: it’s one of the smaller ones, with two seats in the middle row and three in the back. There’s an open beer can in the cupholder next to one of those middle seats. Another empty one on the floor, and several more unopened cans still in a plastic bag. The others must have been waiting for him here for a while. 

The back row is too narrow for a man of Steve’s height, and he has to angle his legs sideways to fit into the cramped space. Rumlow doesn’t return to the passenger seat up front, but instead climbs into the back row too, settling in next to Steve so that Steve is forced to shove his long legs forward into the seat in front of him. Rollins has taken that seat now, and Steve tries not to jolt him too badly.

“Ready to go, Cap?” Rumlow asks as Steve is still repositioning himself. 

“Of course,” Steve says, a little forcefully, and he puts his seatbelt on. He’s still feeling annoyed about the shove, and the heavy feeling from before has not entirely left him. Rumlow smiles at him again, and then Steve starts as Rumlow hooks a friendly elbow around his neck, like he's giving him a hug or wants to ruffle his hair. As Cooke switches the van into drive, though, Rumlow moves his hand, pressing his palm down across Steve’s face to cover his eyes. 

That is the first actual surprising thing that has happened. Surprising, and… kind of stupid. They haven’t even left the parking lot yet. Is he supposed to be feeling lost and disoriented when they aren’t even out of the goddamn premises?

Still, he refrains from sighing. Rumlow will be able to feel it if he does, and Steve is playing along. 

Hw forces himself to ease up a bit as they drive, leaning his head back against the fabric of the headrest behind him. Rumlow’s arm is still draped around his neck, close in a way that would be almost impossible if he were actually wearing a seatbelt, which he isn’t. In front of them, the others all seem to be in a great mood—there’s chatter, and laughter, and the sharp metallic sound of another can being opened. There’s an edge to it all, though, one that Steve can detect even with his vision mostly gone, even trapped in the van’s back corner. Nervousness. 

“This is going to be more challenging than Hong Kong,” Barnett says, and over the engine noise Steve hears the swish of liquid in the can as he takes a drink.

“Like you were even sober enough to remember Hong Kong,” Cooke says from up front.

“I remember it being  _challenging_.”

“Everything’s challenging when you’re too drunk to get your dick out of your pants before you piss.”

Laughter. Next to Steve, Rumlow laughs too—Steve feels the shaking movement of his ribs against his side. Steve pretends he isn’t listening. He doesn’t remember a mission in Hong Kong, or even reading about one. He has not seen any of them drunk. 

This is why he has to play along, and keep playing along, he thinks. It’s not as if the men  _exclude_  him, exactly, it’s just that Steve is still so new, and most of the others have worked together for so long. Then there’s all the in-jokes that are not so much a new-guy problem as a _Steve_ problem: so many movie quotes, so much reminiscing about discontinued childhood toys and cartoons and adolescent crushes that Steve hasn’t heard of and can't research on the spot. So many references to newly invented sexual acts that go right over Steve’s head as everyone else laughs. Sometimes Steve spends more time around his teammates fake-smiling at things he’s pretending to understand than he does actually smiling. Sometimes he wonders if Rumlow in particular is making up some of those sex acts just to try to get Steve to look them up. It’s harmless, really, and they don’t mean anything bad by it, but—it’s there. 

“It’ll be more fun than challenging,” Cooke says, then adds “for most of us, anyway,” and Steve pretends he hadn’t heard.

He concentrates on the route they're taking, mentally tracing the van's path through the city. Rumlow’s hand is still firm against the top half of his face, even though his arm must be getting sore by now, even though his skin must be sticking to the leather jacket, even though he must know that covering Steve’s eyes is useless, even as a game. Steve knows exactly where they are, and would even if Rumlow's hand didn’t let in a sliver of light at the bottom of his field of vision where Rumlow’s little finger can’t fit tightly enough over his nose. It’s dark out already: the light that he can see down there there is muted and orange. 

“Almost there, Cap.” It’s the first time Rumlow’s spoken to him while they’re sitting like this, and his voice is almost uncomfortably close. But the tone’s familiar, friendly. Rumlow’s always been good to Steve, not just on the field but when they’re around the others as well. Rumlow’s good at catching when Steve is confused, and explaining things to him. Sometimes he explains a bit  _too_  much, stuff that Steve doesn’t really want to know about, but that’s okay. Steve likes it that he is upfront in his admiration of Steve’s skills in battle and his physical abilities, too, instead of being intimidated. It’s refreshing. And honestly…

… he’d never admit this to another living person, even under torture, but it’s nice to have Rumlow’s arm around him like this, with the other man easy and steady next to him, his left side pressed up against Steve’s right arm, head close enough to his own that his hair occasionally tickles Steve’s ear. It’s warm inside the van and Rumlow is just in a t-shirt, and his arm around his neck is providing the most skin-on-skin human contact Steve has had since six weeks ago, when the very nice but somewhat pushy girl who works at the coffee place two blocks from his apartment had pulled Steve into the back room and started pawing at him. Steve had gone along with it all for a few minutes, feeling blank and dazed and horny, but had finally been overcome with guilt—Peggy is still  _alive_ , damnit—and begged off. 

This touch isn’t sexual at all, not like that very pushy girl’s had been, and Steve’s body can completely sidestep all of that wrenching guilt and just—appreciate it. Appreciate the way it makes the weight in his stomach disappear, the discomfort sitting in his throat fade almost to nothing. 

Rumlow must have picked up on it at least a little bit, since he’s a sharp guy and Steve isn’t exactly skilled at hiding these things. He doesn’t say anything though, doesn’t pull away from him or make a sarcastic comment. Steve likes that. Rumlow is a good guy.

Steve exhales, slowly, as they pull away at an intersection. The others are still talking, but lower now, a conversation not aimed at him, and not aimed at excluding him—he might as well not be here. Steve counts the streets that they’re going past, making sure he’s still tuned in to their exact location, but it is mostly out of habit: his heart’s not really in it. He’s not in actual danger, after all. He can smell Rumlow’s aftershave; a stronger version of the pleasant smell that’s familiar by now after working with the man for so long. He can smell what must be hand soap on Rumlow’s palm, and the beer from the men in the row in front of him.

The light visible in the little gap between Rumlow’s fingers and Steve’s skin has gotten dimmer as they hit the suburbs. It’s a good thing that Steve didn’t have anything planned tonight, he thinks, but then again it’s not like Steve ever has much planned outside work and Peggy. He can’t even go to that coffee place anymore. 

“Almost ready?” Cooke calls from the front after a few minutes, and the van slows down and turns, then comes to a stop. Ahead of them is the faint, clicking-and-grinding sound of an automatic garage door opening. Next to him Rumlow shifts, sitting up straighter and peeling away, leaving patches of Steve’s skin cold and damp where they'd been touching. 

“About fucking time,” Barnett says as the van starts moving again, pulling into what must be a garage. He cranes his head to look back at Steve. “How you doing, Captain?”

Steve makes himself smile, a little, in reply. 

The engine cuts off, and a second later someone wrenches the sliding door open. Rumlow removes his hand from Steve’s face. Steve looks around, blinking in the bright light.

Beyond the van window is... what looks like the double garage of a suburban house. Bare drywall, storage containers stacked along one wall, a snowblower in the corner near the door. He isn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but the needless drama of sort-of blindfolding him on the way to a  _completely normal house_  makes him want to roll his eyes. 

But Rumlow is still next to him, and he squeezes Steve's arm through his jacket, friendly. Then he lets go and climbs out of the van, and Steve undoes his seatbelt and moves after him to stand, stooping, on the little area of space just inside the van’s sliding door, next to the middle row where the two men are still seated. He pauses there to survey this side of the garage as well, and in front of him Rumlow takes a step back from the side of the van, the concrete floor of the garage providing ample room, and smiles up at him. Something’s hidden in that smile now, something knowing.

“Let's do this right, Cap, or you’ll be the new guy forever,” Rumlow says, and then someone sitting in the middle row pushes Steve hard and violently from behind, and he falls.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Without his new-and-improved reflexes, Steve thinks, he probably would have hit the garage floor hard enough to break a bone. As it is, he reacts quickly enough to slow the fall, catching himself on his hands and forearms. His cheekbone still jars against the cold concrete, and it’s not a dignified landing.

He gets to his feet almost instantly, feeling himself flush with anger. He’d figured that this _celebration_ was going to involve rough treatment, yes, but it just seems inappropriate, catching him off guard like that. On someone else, it could have been _dangerous_. Steve is about to open his mouth and inform everyone around him of this fact when he sees that Rumlow is wearing the same expression that must be on Steve’s own face.

“What the fuck was that about?” Rumlow snaps, but not at Steve; it’s directed past Steve’s shoulder, at someone in the van behind him. Steve, without thinking, tries to step out of the way.

“Shoving him from behind?” Rumlow continues. “Fucking pussies. We hadn’t even started yet.” He turns back to Steve, still looking like he wants to murder at least one of his teammates, and then he’s suddenly up all close in Steve’s space, straightening Steve's leather jacket, looking him over like he’s a parent checking a child for injuries. Steve stands still and holds himself stiffly throughout this show of affection. If Rumlow’s so angry about him getting pushed out of the van, then what had he been smiling about before?

But Rumlow is grinning at him now, face bright, and he says: “Sorry about that, Cap.”

“Sorry,” Barnett echoes from the van, behind them.

“It’s alright,” Steve says automatically, before he knows if he means it.

Rumlow pats his arm, strong through the leather. “Good man. They’re not always the most professional, but we get by.” He smiles harder. “You want a drink before we get started?”

Steve shakes his head, and Rumlow pats his arm again, and then puts an affectionate arm around his shoulder. His thumb is just touching the skin of Steve’s neck next to the collar of the jacket. His skin is warm.

Well, whatever, Steve thinks as he’s led around the front of the van toward a back corner of the garage. Rumlow had been genuinely mad about it, and Steve’s face and hands have already stopped hurting anyway, and it’s nothing to stay fixated on.

Behind him, someone is opening the van’s driver-side door; he hears the other three men climbing out. He keeps track of their movements only vaguely as he takes in what’s in front of him. The double garage is well-lit; the van is the only vehicle in here, which leaves a patch of space off to the side where another car would usually be parked. There’s a little area in one corner of this space that’s been covered with one of those white canvas dropcloths painters put down to avoid staining the floor. Only this one seems to have been set up as something analogous to a picnic blanket: on top of the dropcloth, someone has arranged four honest-to-god lawn chairs, the type that he has seen people sit down to watch fireworks on. They’re arranged in a loose half-circle, an empty area of canvas in front of them.

Rumlow squeezes his shoulder and then lets go, leaves Steve in order to step past the odd setup to the wall behind it, where there’s a mini-fridge plugged in next to a towering metal tool chest. He opens the little fridge and pulls out a bottle of beer.

Steve had shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket without even noticing, and now he takes them out, crosses his arms instead. This is—

It’s _strange_ , is what it is. The chairs, the semicircle. If he were someone else, maybe he’d be intimidated. Instead, he shrugs to get the tension out of his shoulders. “So can we—get started?” It comes out like he’s asking the question before a particularly unpleasant dental procedure, but that’s fine with him: Steve will play along with this, but he _won’t_ pretend he doesn’t think it is stupid.

“Calm down some, Cap.” Rumlow has opened the beer with a silver bottle-opener magnet that’d been stuck to the side of the tool chest, and he raises the bottle like he’s giving him a toast. “No hurry.”

I _am_ calm, Steve wants to say, but Rumlow seems to read his annoyance anyway: he holds up his other hand palm-out, a conciliatory gesture. “Okay then,” he says, something like kindness in his tone, and then he nods at someone behind Steve’s back.

Someone steps closer behind him: Rollins, by the sound of it. Steve’s on guard, ready to take him down if he tries anything surprising. But he just grasps Steve by the shoulder and leads him forward a few steps, off the concrete and onto the spread-out canvas cloth.

They reach that blank space that’s surrounded by the half-circle of chairs, and then the hand on Steve’s shoulder changes to firm downward pressure—clearly, he is supposed to kneel down.

He does it, and even though he’s close enough to Rumlow now that he’ll be able to see, Steve doesn’t try to hide the fact that he’s rolling his eyes. He could be home right now, sitting alone on his couch and staring past the window like he does most nights when he can’t find the energy to put music on, and it would _still_ be way more productive than this.

But he plays along, because that’s what he does now. Steve forces his hands down to his sides and stays there on his knees. The air right here feels warmer than it had when Steve was next to the van, and when he looks up he sees that there’s a heating vent above him, set into the drywall of the garage ceiling, expelling a little stream of warm air. So bizarre, that people would heat a _garage_. It’s wasteful, and it’s likely the only reason that Steve feels warm now, sweat prickling under his arms. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the two other men moving toward where Rumlow’s still standing, but they don’t come close to Steve, and so he keeps his eyes on the man in front of him.

“Close your eyes, Cap,” Rollins says, and it’s obvious, from his tone and his face and the wave of anticipation that rises in the room and from what Steve knows about rituals such as this one, that this is the part where they start hitting him.

Original, he thinks. He closes his eyes, as requested, but makes no attempt to keep the irritation off his face.

The blow is much, much harder than he expected.

It lands across one of his cheekbones, the one that had just hit the concrete floor two minutes ago, and it doesn’t knock Steve down, of course, but his upper body _does_ sway to the right a couple of inches and Steve tenses, frowning, hands rising from his sides almost of their own accord before he carefully forces them down again.

He takes a breath. It stings, the whole side of his face throbbing, but he’s used to way worse pain than this. What’s far more irritating is the sound of someone laughing, in front of him and to his left. He is about to open his mouth to say something about it when Rollins hits him again.

Steve rocks back again, and this time he barely has time to steady himself before there’s another blow, and then after that they just keep coming, a steady thud-thud-thud that brings a new flash of pain to a different part of his head every time. It _hurts_ , but far worse is forcing himself to hold still: he clutches his hands into fists against the denim of his jeans and feels the tension go up his arms and all the way into his spine at the effort of not moving, not stopping this, even though he could.

That’s the worst part, until someone starts laughing again.

Barnett, that’s who it is; he can identify the laughter even while he’s being used as a human punching bag. It’s not a cruel laugh, but Steve _remembers_ laughter in positions like this, had become accustomed to it a long time before fighting people became his job. At least back then, he could try to fight back, and now that he can’t the sound feels like it’s cutting into his skull.

Laughter can be nervous, he tells himself. The kid might be laughing at the ridiculousness of the stupid situation. He might be—

The thudding sound and the pain in his head stops, and after a second Steve risks opening his eyes.

His vision is a little blurry, but he can see enough to tell that Rollins has turned to look at Rumlow, who is still standing back near the garage wall, observing. Steve can’t see Rollins’ face, of course, but he seems to be silently asking Rumlow a question. After a moment he turns, looks down at Steve again, a dark figure against the bright white of the ceiling. Question answered, apparently. Steve closes his eyes again before the next punch.

Rollins doesn’t hit him any harder now—he hadn’t exactly been pulling his punches before—but what makes it different is that this time he’s putting _thought_ into it: instead of random, distributed blows, he starts hitting the exact same spot on Steve’s jaw, again and again and again.

Steve holds very still and doesn’t make a noise and fights the sharp, nauseating nervousness rising in his stomach, because by the third blow it just feels _bad_ , and by the fifth he feels himself sway back more violently, head moving loose like he’s drunk. His eyes snap open with surprise at the motion, in time to see Rollins swing again, see him putting his whole arm into it like a human wrecking ball, and this time Steve falls back enough to need to steady himself with the fingertips of one hand. His face is dripping wet, hot. The room blurs further, the edges of it turning fuzzy grey, but Steve is at least satisfied he caught himself, satisfied he’s still upright, and that is when Rollins kicks him hard in the gut.

Steve falls forward, gasping, more out of surprise than anything else. It’s painful—those are heavy boots, goddamn it—and Barnett is fucking _laughing_ again, and something in him swells with anger, and he grits his teeth and—

“Breaktime. Breaktime. Everyone stop, have a snack. Whoa, Cap! Look at you.”

Rumlow’s kneeling in front of him. Steve blinks at him: blood is trickling out of his nose, has been since one of the earlier punches, steady and ticklish. His mouth is bitter with the taste of more blood. He must have lost a few seconds there—he wasn't unconscious, of course, he’s fine, he is just a bit overwhelmed and zoned out, that’s all—because Rollins has disappeared now; checking over Rumlow’s shoulder, Steve can see that three of the lawn chairs are now occupied. Barnett is leaning forward in his, looking like a kid watching his favorite cartoon. Cooke is watching with more muted interest, the tiniest of smiles on his face. Rollins’ face is blank. The snacks, at least, appear to have been metaphorical.

He looks back to Rumlow, blinking blood out of his eyes—something must have split open above an eyebrow, as well.

“Look at this,” Rumlow’s saying again, sounding surprised and almost impressed, and Steve follows his gaze, at the blood down the front of his shirt and on his jeans and on the dropcloth in front of where he is kneeling.

Head wounds bleed a lot, of course, but the amount still surprises him. The heater above them is still going strong; he can feel the moving air against his hair now, feel it on the sweat on the back of his neck.

Rumlow’s hand is heavy on his shoulder. “You wanna stop here?”

Steve shakes his head, which makes everything blur anew. It’s a stupid question. Does Rumlow really think he can’t take a little blood and roughing up? He is Steve Rogers. He has _died_ before. Half of his _nightmares_ are worse than this.

Rumlow nods at him, and his eyebrows are raised slightly and he looks—impressed. _Proud_ , even.

Maybe it’s only because Steve is bleeding and grasping for something non-shitty to experience right now, but it makes his heart lift a little.

“Okay, buddy,” he says. “But we gotta do something about all this blood.”

“It’s fine,” Steve croaks, but Rumlow is already leaning forward, catching Steve under the arms like he’s supporting him, and then he shifts his grasp, moving his hands to start removing Steve’s leather jacket. Steve lets him pull it off, thinks maybe he’s concerned about it getting ruined with all the blood. Then he goes to lift Steve’s t-shirt, grabbing it near the hem.

“It’s fine,” Steve says again, stopping Rumlow’s hands with his own, and Rumlow looks up at him.

“Thought you said we were going forward.”

Rumlow is so close, and it should be intense, but his tone is—not serious. He looks, in fact, like he can barely keep a smile off his face. Rumlow, Steve realizes, thinks that this is just as stupid as Steve does.

It’s that, mostly, that makes him let go of Rumlow’s hands and let him continue. That, and how nice it feels to have someone so close, but he’d never admit that. Rumlow peels off the t-shirt, white and splashed down the front with dark red, and sets it down next to Steve’s jacket.

He starts helping Steve with his boots next, moving him to get his feet out in front of him, and by then Steve actually gets it: he is supposed to have less clothing for this next part, for whatever dumb reason; the blood is just an excuse. It’s stupid, but Rumlow thinks it is stupid too, and now that Steve knows that he’s got someone else here with him who is actually sane about this, it’s so much easier.

He goes along with it: lets him take off his boots and socks, moves to sit on his ass so Rumlow can undo his jeans. Pretends like it’s not dumb that Rumlow’s not letting Steve just do it himself.

“Least he’s not wearing weird old-man underwear,” Barnett says from where he’s sitting when the jeans come off.

“God, that would have been fucking awful,” Cooke says.

“Didn’t bring a supply with me when I was frozen,” Steve says, and it manages to come out unslurred, and someone laughs, sounding genuine and friendly, and Steve relaxes a little bit. Barnett laughing before hadn’t been that bad, really. It had reminded Steve of bad things, but Barnett couldn’t help that.

It’s not so bad. Steve has goosebumps, the hair on his arms and his legs standing up despite the warm air from the vent above him, and his head still feels like he had gotten caught at ground level during an animal stampede, but it’s not so bad. Maybe the worst part of this is already over.

Steve even manages a smile that isn’t entirely fake as Rumlow sets his folded jeans down on top of his t-shirt on the canvas next to them. Rumlow smiles at him in return, the same _yeah I know this is dumb_ expression under it, just like before.

Then he says: “There’s blood on your underwear too, Cap.”


	3. Chapter 3

It’s not like being naked in front of these men is something new. They have seen Steve naked before, in the showers. And even if they hadn’t—Steve is a wonder of science. He’s had more naked medical examinations than he has birthdays. Even if you include all his birthdays in the ice.   
  
It’s all just a part of this dumb  _celebration_ , he thinks—a part that is supposed to make him feel more vulnerable, maybe. It’s not going to work on Steve, whatever the rationale is. And from Rumlow’s expression, Rumlow knows that already.   
  
He’ll play along, but he’s  _not_  letting Rumlow do this part himself. No way. Steve hooks his hands into the waistband of his boxer briefs, and when Rumlow moves forward as if to help, Steve gives him the kind of withering look he might use on a bad guy who has not yet been quite bad enough to merit immediate physical violence.   
  
It might not be as effective as usual with Steve’s face covered in blood, but Rumlow smiles, raising his eyebrows slightly, and relents. He doesn’t protest when Steve pulls the underwear down, lifting his hips to do it.   
  
The movement of his body feels fuzzy, too faraway, like his head is still not quite working right. But only the tips of Steve’s ears feel hot as he slips the underwear down over his feet, and that’s as it should be, because this is no different than a shower, no different than being looked at by a nurse or a doctor. It’s exactly the same.   
  
Steve folds the briefs in half, sets them down on top of his other clothes. And as Steve’s doing that, Rumlow moves, leans in closer. He wraps an arm around Steve’s shoulder.   
  
_He’s trying to_  comfort  _me_ , Steve thinks, and can’t resist a very skeptical sideways glance that just makes Rumlow grin wider.  _He thinks I’m upset._    
  
There’s no way Steve could look that upset, he is  _fine_ , this is just stupid and he wants to go home, and—is comforting him even what Rumlow is doing? He doesn’t know. He just knows that his thoughts are popping up more slowly than they should be, like the gap when you’re on the phone with someone on the opposite end of the world, and by the time he manages to grasp what’s happening Rumlow is already behind him, wrapped around him like an octopus, face pressed close to the back of Steve’s head…  
  
…but that is just an excuse, of course, and he knows it; Steve doesn’t let people get the drop on him, no matter the beating he has taken. Rumlow’s hugging him like this now because Steve had felt him doing it, and had failed to react. Steve had  _let_  him. He feels his face go red at the thought.   
  
The others don’t react, at least. Maybe they’re as embarrassed as he is.   
  
“It’s okay, Cap,” Rumlow murmurs. “Just trying to make you feel better,” and Steve goes even redder. So he  _is_  trying to comfort him? It doesn’t make sense, because Rumlow doesn’t hug people. He is not a hugger, not affectionate like other people Steve has worked with.   
  
But Rumlow  _is_  always so much more understanding of Steve than the others, or at least he tries his best to be. Perhaps he just truly thinks Steve is in need of this right now.   
  
“You don’t have to,” Steve says to him now, softly so that the others can at least pretend not to hear. “Just… keep going with the next part.”   
  
He doesn’t answer, and Steve thinks maybe he’d spoken too quietly to be heard at all, even by Rumlow so close to him. The only reaction is Rumlow shifting so he’s sitting more directly behind him, and then he moves one hand down, sliding over the back of Steve’s ribs. It’s ticklish, but he holds still as the hand strokes up again, then down. Steve swallows, and the sound seems loud in the bright silent space around them.   
  
“You don’t have to,” Steve says again, keeping his voice steady.   
  
“Shhh,” Rumlow says, gentle. “I do.”  
  
Steve swallows again to ease the growing weight in his stomach. Oh. So pawing at him like this  _is_  the next part.   
  
Well. If they’re back on track with this stupid ritual ceremony bullshit, at least it means it will be over sooner.   
  
He exhales. The cuts on his head seem to have stopped bleeding, at least, the sharpest pains there fading already. And thanks to the heating vent, he’s not cold, even exposed like this.   
  
Behind him, Rumlow’s close enough for Steve to be able to feel the heat radiating off his skin. The pawing at his back is settling into something more familiar. It feels, more than anything, like he is getting a back rub, and that is so goddamn  _inappropriate_  for right now that Steve searches for something to say, some joke to ease the tension. But then Rumlow leans his head against the back of Steve’s and makes a little low understanding sound, and Steve loses the thread of the thought. On instinct, he closes his eyes, but closing his eyes makes the world tilt, so he opens them again.   
  
One of Rumlow’s hands is at his lower back now, and he makes another little shushing, comforting noise near Steve’s ear, too low for the others to hear. No one laughs, there’s still no reaction from the others in the room and that part is good at least, and Steve exhales again, feels some of the tension leave the muscles in his chest and arms, feels his head dip forward slightly as he lets himself relax into it…  
  
It’s—nice, as well, even if this touch is a part of something Steve doesn’t agree with. It’s so nice having hands on him that aren’t punching him or examining him, hands that don’t belong to a stranger or someone trying to hurt him, and the blush spreads from Steve’s face over his neck and all the way down his chest.   
  
Rumlow must be able to tell, and the others must be able to tell too, but nobody says anything. That’s nice, too.  
  
Steve lets his head fall forward more. Everything is still a little fuzzy round the edges inside his brain, and he doesn’t fight that now; he just tunes out everything, the bright light, the faint moving air on his skin, Rumlow’s slight movement and the quiet shuffling noises behind him. Rumlow touches along his sides again, and down, and then—  
  
Steve is out of Rumlow’s grip almost before he registers what he’s doing, already up on his feet near the edge of the dropcloth, hands up like he’s going to fight. Rumlow’s in front of him, on his back on the floor from when Steve had pushed him away.   
  
Next to him, Rollins stands up from his chair. The other two men just look up at him from where they’re sitting.   
  
“What the—” Steve has to stop speaking for a moment; his skin feels like it’s on fire, more from anger than embarrassment, although he’s as also embarrassed as hell. “What the  _hell_  was that?”  
  
Rumlow has pushed himself up on his elbows already; he sits up, but makes no move to stand. In Steve’s peripheral vision, Rollins moves as if to step closer, and Rumlow holds up a hand, signaling for him to stop. “It’s all right, Steve,” he says. “Don’t worry about it.”  
  
Steve pauses with his mouth open on a half-formed question. Don’t  _worry_  about it? Steve isn’t  _worried_ , he is reacting to the fact that Rumlow had just fucking tried to put his  _fingers—_  
  
“It’s okay, Steve,” Rumlow says. “We don’t have to go on. It’s fine. All right? Rollins, back off, can’t you see he’s scared? It’s okay, Steve. It’s not for everyone.”  
  
Steve’s eyes shift between him and where the others are sitting, their faces blank. Back to Rumlow, whose expression is as open and friendly as Steve has ever seen it. “I don’t—”  
  
“I  _said_  it’s fine,” Rumlow says, cutting Steve off, but he’s not talking to Steve at all: Rollins has moved again, and Rumlow is scolding him. “Back off, can’t you see he’s freaking out?”  
  
This time, Rollins actually listens, and takes a small step back. Steve looks at him, then back at Rumlow on the floor. He raises his chin. He’s okay, he can keep standing confidently like this, he’s okay, even with no clothes. “What—were you trying to do?”   
  
“Nothing that I wanted to do, either. Don’t worry, Steve, you’re better off skipping it.”   
  
Steve glances at the others again, folding his arms across his chest now, which will help prevent him from unconsciously trying to cover himself. Rollins is glaring now, but not at Steve. Cooke and Barnett are not trying to hide the disappointment on their faces. But Rumlow—when Steve looks back at him, Rumlow’s face is nothing but understanding.  
  
Steve’s brain might still be creaky, but not too creaky for Steve to register immediately the last time and place he had seen that look on his face: Rumlow at Steve’s apartment, not long after they started working together, meeting to discuss STRIKE-related plans after they’d had dinner. After all the work stuff was done, Rumlow, messing around, had shown Steve that video on his phone, and Steve—he was still new back then, and he had not seen anything like it before.   
  
Rumlow had laughed, then, at Steve’s negative reaction to the video, but he’d been  _understanding_ , unfailingly polite; he’d put his phone away and did not take it out again. But that had turned out to be worse, because he’d treated Steve differently afterwards, both when they were alone and around the other men. He’d been  _gentle_  around him, like Steve was a child, like he needed protecting from the others’ roughness.   
  
It had gotten better eventually, mostly—Steve had gotten better about how he reacted to the others’ phone videos, definitely—but if Steve runs from this he is not sure it will get better again. Not with other people around to see it happening, too.  
  
Steve doesn’t need rescuing or special treatment anymore. He had left that behind a long time ago.  
  
“He’s from another time. It’s not the same for him,” Rumlow is saying now. “Barnett, why don’t you hand this poor guy his clothes, and we can—”  
  
“I—” Steve’s voice breaks, but Rumlow stops talking regardless, and turns his head to look at him. “I—won’t leave,” Steve goes on, his voice still not making it to the volume he’d intended. “It’s okay.”  
  
Rumlow shakes his head. “Already said it’s fine, Steve. We’ll call you a cab.”  
  
Steve has spent every minute since he got here wishing fervently to go home, but he can’t do it now. He is going to do better.  
  
He makes an attempt at a smile. “I said it’s okay,” he says. “And I’m in charge.”  
  
That seems to make it sink in, finally, that Steve isn’t kidding around. Rumlow smiles, genuine, and Steve hates that the expression loosens something in his chest. Steve can’t manage anything more than a weak smile back, but he does manage not to flinch when Rollins, next to him, leans in and wraps a celebratory arm around his shoulder.  
  
“He’s still in!” he says, and squeezes the top of Steve’s arm very hard.  
  
Rumlow’s “I know this is stupid” look is back, behind his smile, that look of recognition that’s like a signal in the darkness. “I know it’s fucked up. But—tradition, yeah?” He shrugs.  
  
Steve nods, curt. “Yeah.”  _I can’t fucking believe I’m agreeing to this_ , is what he is thinking, but it’s—it’s not weirder than the things he has seen on Rumlow’s phone, not by far, and there’s no use dwelling on the details when he should just be pushing forward.   
  
So Steve steps forward, awkward, his limbs feeling unwieldy, his head too light. He sits down again on the canvas. He notices now just how cold the concrete floor feels through the cloth, against his bare skin.  
  
A hand on his hip, slipping across Steve’s stomach to hold him in place, and Steve breathes normally. He holds still as the other hand drops behind him, as two fingers—push against him, rough, forceful. When Steve jerks away a little, this time it’s just instinct.  
  
“Relax, Cap, Relax.” Rumlow’s so close behind him, breath and body heat against Steve’s back. His fingers are wet with something cold: lubricant, he supposes; that must be what Rumlow had been doing before, the noises Steve had heard. “This is all just part of it, okay?” he goes on. “We’re not gonna hurt you.”  
  
Steve keeps still, tampers down the reactions of his body like he’d repress a flinch while firing a gun. He holds still, and then it  _happens_ , a swift uncomfortable push, and Steve makes a noise.  
  
Nobody laughs; nobody else makes a sound.   
  
Instead, there’s just a soft approving  _shhh_  near Steve’s ear, and Steve breathes steadily in through his nose and out through his mouth and keeps his eyes on the floor in front of him.


	4. Chapter 4

This isn’t the first time something’s been inside him—thanks to his long years of medical issues, the list of objects that have been up Steve’s ass is longer than he either wants to remember or admit. Thermometers. Suppositories. Enema nozzles when the drugs the doctors gave him left him blocked up. Those are not pleasant memories, but they’re familiar ones, and this is—just like that, really. It’s nothing more, nothing that matters.   
  
But the fingers inside him don’t stay still. They push all the way in, feeling too long and unbelievably wrong inside him, and then they pull out again, then push back in. It’s a lot like—but no, it’s not sexual.  _Nothing_  about this is sexual, not here on the floor of a garage with the lights on bright overhead and with Rumlow fully clothed behind him, not with the others watching, the people that Steve works and fights with. This is just—something else. A test of what Steve can endure, maybe. A stupid, pointless test, yes, but also apparently a fucking effective one, because the longer it goes on, the more Steve’s skin feels as hot as during one of his childhood fevers. The position of the others’ chairs means they can’t see  _directly_  what Rumlow is doing, but they can see Steve’s face burning up under all the blood that’s still on it, and if Steve focuses on that fact for more than a fraction of a second he won’t be able to bear it.   
  
“How you doing, Cap?” Rumlow’s voice is close. It isn’t mocking. It sounds concerned.  
  
Steve can’t think of something clever to say, and could probably not even get his voice to work even if he could think of something, so he just nods, his jaw tight and his face hot.   
  
“Not so used to this part, is he,” Barnett says idly, up above them.  
  
“Wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Cooke replies.   
  
The words should  _mean_  something, and Steve should react, but it all seems like too much. He’s too busy trying to keep his focus. The sheer blunt surprise has worn off now, and the last of the mental fuzziness left over from Rollins’ beating is ebbing, and that means Steve doesn’t have much to think about now except  _exactly what is happening._  The feeling of it, the touching and pressing from the inside that is both familiar and uniquely awful. Filling up Steve’s head with memories he doesn’t want. Lying in his mother’s bed with a doctor taking his temperature, with his mother there beside him, holding his hand. Sick and broke after his mother had passed, needing medicine, but not alone, not back then. Steve squeezes his hands into fists and concentrates harder on the little patch of grayish canvas on the floor in front of him.  _Stay in the present_ , he thinks, because even this present is not worse than thinking about that.   
  
Stay here. Steve is covered with goosebumps despite the heater in the ceiling, and he can hear the  _noises_  that Rumlow’s fingers are making, can hear the creak of a chair as someone adjusts their weight. A tight feeling growing in his chest, dark and urgent and lapping at the edge of panic, but it will be okay. He just has to stay calm and keep his eyes on the floor.  
  
Rumlow’s fingers pull out slightly, so he’s only two knuckles deep, and then push back in a little and twist, probing at his insides in a way that makes Steve feel nothing but vaguely nauseous until—  
  
Steve bites his lip and sucks in breath through his nose, and there’s another comforting noise in his ear. “Shhhh. It’s okay, Cap.”  
  
The new feeling under those fingers is very much  _not_  okay, and he bites his lip harder against the embarrassing noise that almost comes out of his mouth, but—no one makes a sound. No one is laughing or snickering, even Barnett isn’t running his mouth for once. There’s something almost awed about the other men’s silence, and that makes this bullshit almost bearable. Almost.  
  
That particular torture doesn’t last, at least: Rumlow’s fingers slow, then pull out of him. Steve knows, from Rumlow’s continued closeness behind him and from that tight feeling in his chest, that it is far from over.  
  
Rumlow’s other hand is on his upper arm, squeezing tight on the muscle. “I’m here for you, Cap,” he says, and Steve nods automatically, trying to breathe his body into something resembling calm. He is not stupid; a part of him already knows what’s coming. But when he hears the clink of Rumlow’s belt buckle he still feels himself tense up, like all the unconscious parts of him are telling him to run.   
  
More noises, movement, a strong comforting hand at his hip. Steve knows what’s there behind him, knows what’s happening; he feels it even before he is gently maneuvered forward onto all fours.  
  
“Okay to go on?” Rumlow says, quiet. Everyone else in the room is silent.  
  
Of course it isn’t okay. Steve closes his eyes, but that seems cowardly, somehow, so he opens them and focuses back on the floor. Rumlow has saved Steve’s life before. Steve trusts him.   
  
“Yes,” he says, then breathes out to control himself.   
  
And—it’s there, large and hard against the most private part of himself. The hand at his hip grips tighter for purchase and Rumlow pushes, and pushes, and…  
  
This is not sex, not really, even though it might seem so much like it. Just like it isn’t really hitting someone when you are sparring with them, just like it’s not murder to shoot another combatant during a war, just like it doesn’t count as killing your best friend if you bring them along on a mission that causes them to die. It’s not sex. Being penetrated this way is  _difficult,_  painful in a way the fingers hadn’t been, but pain is easy, and pain is a focus. It’s not sex, so it’s okay. He trusts Rumlow.  
  
Steve is shaking, very slightly, as Rumlow bottoms out inside him. It’s nothing but an automatic reaction.   
  
Rumlow stays still like that behind him, breathing. “Good job. Good going.”  
  
“Doing my best,” Steve forces out.   
  
It’s not exactly a great joke, but right away there’s laughter around him, friendly laughter from the others. This was the right decision. If Steve had backed off he’d be alone halfway back to his apartment right now, wondering how he could get his team’s trust back. Now he’s here, and this is unpleasant, but so are a lot of things, and it will be over.   
  
“Good job,” Rumlow says again. He’s not moving. “Real good job, baby, you’re doing just fine.”  
  
Steve makes himself nod. Rumlow sounds so utterly self-confident in this, like he was born for it, like this is somehow as natural as a goddamn sunrise, and that overconfident attitude can be close to unbearable elsewhere but it’s actually welcome now: Steve might be a supersoldier with good healing capabilities, but it’s still better to have someone who knows what the hell they’re doing. Rumlow pulls back, then pushes in again, slow, like he’s testing Steve’s reaction. Steve breathes steady and doesn’t flinch, and finally Rumlow thrusts again, harder.  
  
It’s—Steve doesn’t have words in him to describe it. It’s there, and it’s inside him.  
  
“Gonna go a bit faster now, babe. You’re gonna take it so well.” His hand rubs affectionately along the side of Steve’s hip, along his thigh, and then he speeds up like footsteps increasing into a run.   
  
Steve tenses and untenses his fingers against the covered concrete floor, holds still as Rumlow drives into him steady and rhythmic. It hurts, a deep stinging pain, and Steve feels sweat prickle under his arms, on the back of his neck. His mouth still tastes like blood.  
  
It hurts, but more than that it’s just deeply  _unpleasant_ , an alien fullness with an edge of something else there as well, a deep electric feeling that Steve works diligently to keep pushed down. After a minute or two, Rumlow’s hand shifts to Steve’s lower back, fingers spreading out firm over his tailbone. The pressure there is a nice distraction from the other feeling, and it helps as well that Rumlow keeps talking, or close to it—shushing noises and comforting sounds and little words of encouragement that Steve hones in on, rather than on the steady  _thud thud thud_  of Rumlow’s hips hitting his. After a while it's enough that Steve can let his eyes close again, and then he just lets the sound of that voice flow over him, warm and sticky like honey, lets the dark behind his eyelids and the low voice take him away as the rhythm speeds up, familiar in a way Steve won’t let himself admit, and—  
  
He feels the climax, after those last few hard thrusts, slick and wet inside a place that feels stretched-open and hurt and used.  
  
For a second something in him wavers, sudden like still water being disturbed below the surface, vibrating in Steve’s brain like he’s just been punched again. It’s a feeling of  _wrongness_ , deeper than anything that has just happened to him physically. He swallows, feeling cold suddenly below the layer of sweat that’s sprung up all over his skin.  
  
But then Rumlow leans down over him and hooks his chin over Steve’s shoulder, and that pressure against his back, the feel of his hair brushing on the damp skin of Steve’s neck, is both comfortably distracting and also not-terrible in an embarrassing way.   
  
“Shhhh…” Rumlow says, even though Steve hasn’t spoken. “You okay?”  
  
He nods. It’s true; he is already feeling better. Whatever feeling he’d had just now was just another automatic reaction; just the lower parts of Steve’s brain freaking out and not recognizing that this isn’t the threat that his brain thinks it is.   
  
Rumlow runs a hand through Steve’s short damp hair, just once, and then straightens up, peeling himself off Steve's sweaty skin. Steve’s skin aches with the absence. He ignores it.   
  
He pushes himself up into a sitting position, something his bruised insides immediately regret. He keeps the pain off his face, though, fashions an expression of nonchalance as Rumlow does up his pants behind him. Steve sits still, very aware of the sweat and blood on his skin and the mess he can feel inside him. He keeps his breathing even.  
  
Those lower parts of his brain might be wrong about the general situation Steve is in, but they’re useful at telling him  _something_ : Steve knows already that this is not over. He knows it from the heavy feeling in his gut even before Rollins sits up straighter in his folding chair, nods, and stands up.  
  
“All right, Cap!” Rollins says down at him, and for the first time this evening he is smiling. “That’s one down.”


	5. Chapter 5

It’s not that Steve expects Rollins to be gentle, not when the man had just finished cheerfully beating him up barely half an hour ago. But what happens is still jarring, after Rumlow’s measured slowness and affection. He guides Steve onto all fours again, positions himself while Steve is adjusting his hands against the covered floor and trying not to think too much, and then—

“ _Ow_ ,” Steve blurts out, more in surprise than anything else, because he’d known it would hurt but didn’t know it would hurt _more_ , and behind him Rollins gives a loud amused snort and Steve’s face prickles with heat.

No one else makes a sound. Rumlow has taken a seat on one of the lawn chairs—Steve can just see him from the corner of his eye, fully dressed again and with his beer bottle back in his hand—and right now he says nothing at all. That silence is something, at least, and—Rollins is just one more person. It’s just one more person and doing this with two people is not that different than doing it with one. Nothing has changed, not really.

But Rollins is big, big all over, and heavy, and he doesn’t start of slow like Rumlow had; he just starts going at him like a piston and Steve must not entirely succeed at keeping the pain off his face, because off to the side Rumlow makes an unimpressed tutting sound, and leans forward in his chair. The noise is clearly aimed at Rollins, and that makes Steve’s jaw clench more than the pain does: Rumlow should know by now that Steve doesn’t need him _protecting_ him. Steve can take _way_ more than this.

He takes a breath, forces his face into blankness, wills himself to relax as Rollins keeps—as he keeps doing what he’s doing, as he keeps hurting him.

It works, for a while at least. After a few minutes Rollins stops, uses the hands clutching at Steve’s hips to adjust his own angle. Steve feels him shift, uncomfortably, inside of him, before he starts moving again. The new position makes him rub against a spot inside that’s weaker, or perhaps just damaged by Rumlow before; it’s a new, stabbing pain, deeper inside than Steve ever knew he _could_ hurt.

Steve presses both hands firm against the floor as a counterpoint to the temptation to react more, to move, to run. “Can you use some more—” He forces the words out through his teeth. “Some more—”

“He wants more lube, idiot.” Rumlow says, and stands up from the chair, leans over to hand what must be the container of it to Rollins. Once Rollins has taken it from him, Rumlow pauses to run his hand over Steve’s head, through his hair, which Steve figures is supposed to be a comforting gesture.

He turns his head away and ignores it. The feeling of Rollins pulling out of Steve’s body is also singularly unpleasant, but it’s a relief to hear what sounds like him spread some of the clear liquid over himself. Rollins squeezes more of it out—Steve hears the squelching noise—and then Steve feels it dripping along his backside, cold and slimy and oddly medicinal. When Rollins presses back into him a few seconds later, it still hurts, but the slide of it is easier. It’s not as difficult to keep the reaction off his face.

“I guess you weren’t allowed to say ‘lube’ back in his day,” Barnett says as Rumlow settles back down in the chair next to him.

“They didn’t _have_ lube back in his day,” Cooke replies sagely.

“Huh,” says Rumlow, “your grandma told me different.”

Steve gives an unimpressed snort but otherwise ignores them, because their banter is so obviously untrue it’s not worth arguing about. It’s not the _word_ that’s the problem: Even if Steve _had_ been that much of an innocent, which he hadn’t been, Rumlow’s many phone videos would have taken care of that.

No, Steve hadn’t wanted to say _lube_ because saying it makes what they’re doing sound like sex, and it isn’t sex.

He drops his head. At the edge of his vision he can see Rumlow leaning back, his chair making a little creaking noise as he settles back into it, and even though Steve doesn't need him he can’t help but think that he seems so far away now, so out of reach.

Rollins doesn’t waste any time getting back into his rhythm. The pain isn’t as bad, but it’s far from gone, and the odd tightness in Steve’s chest is still there, like something hugging him too close. It only gets worse as Rollins keeps going, and Rollins keeps going for so much longer than Rumlow, or maybe it just seems longer. Steve keeps his head down, feels the sweat sliding in droplets down the skin of his face, ticklish. It drips down off his brow, off the end of his nose, tinted pink from the blood still on his skin from before. He wishes they’d turn the heater off. He wishes a lot of things.

But it’s okay: Steve is doing okay, he was even still able to give _orders_ , in a way, while this was happening. And it’s—good, maybe, that his teammates can see him holding up against pain this way. It’s not like Steve hasn’t had practice, hasn’t felt worse. It's not like others haven't given so much more.

After a few minutes Rollins’ hands leave Steve’s hips and he leans down over him, as if he’s going to hug him from behind like Rumlow had. Instead, one of his hands goes to Steve’s chest, sliding over the wet skin, and his fingers catch on a nipple. His fingers rub against it, rough, making Steve fight the urge to twitch away, and then he pinches down, sudden and hard.

Steve bites down on his yell a moment before it happens, but a little groan still escapes his mouth. He closes his eyes tightly: when he opens them, he sees his hands clutching hard at the dropcloth covering the floor. Behind him, Rollins snorts again, loud.

 _Too much for you?_ Is clearly the question that’s supposed to be conveyed by that noise, and at least Rollins didn’t actually put it into words: if he had, Steve would have felt compelled to think up some wise-ass reply, because of _course_ it’s not too much for him. It wasn’t even that bad, just _surprising_ ; he hadn’t expected—

Rollins pinches again, harder, digging his fingernails in enough to break into the flesh, and it _hurts,_ and Steve keeps silent and doesn’t move. But some reaction in his body must give away the pain, something in the tenseness in the muscles of his back or something that Rollins can feel inside of him, because Rollins makes a loud satisfied noise, his other hand gripping down hard on Steve’s shoulder. Steve keeps his eyes on the floor and blinks very fast to clear his eyes as Rollins slams his hips against him a few final times with a gleeful abandon that reminds Steve of the punches from before, and then finally groans and goes still.

Steve still feels both of the hands on him after Rollins pulls away and stands up. He leaves behind wetness, everywhere: sweat on Steve’s face, mixed sweat from the both of them on the back of Steve’s thighs and on his ass. Liquid dripping out of him, running warm down the inside of his thigh. A heavy layer of unexplained tears in his eyes.

He blinks some more, annoyed at the moisture there. His chest feels constricted, heavy and choking, like the memory of asthma, even though Steve can breathe, even though he _does_ breathe very steadily and deeply as Rollins steps away from him, as another chair creaks and Cooke gets to his feet. But rather than going away with the breathing like it should, the feeling _worsens_ : everything feels shaky, as if Steve’s arms might give out.

Steve breathes, and doesn’t move, and time doesn’t feel right for a few seconds: there are voices, and more voices, and then Cooke is behind him and his hand is on Steve’s hip, but Steve doesn’t remember what was said, doesn’t remember the other man getting there.

He needs to pull himself together, because he’s _fine_ and none of this is a reason not to stay alert and focussed, but Cooke is already touching him again and Steve’s chest hurts and he feels light and perhaps it’s better just to… stay like this. His head feels fuzzy, the way it had right after Rollins had punched him before, but this is a _comforting_ fuzziness, dreamy, like the feeling of retreating into the bed in his apartment after a long day at work, and Steve doesn’t remember feeling this kind of dazed, whited-out nothingness in his head for any length of time since right after—

But he doesn’t focus on that; thinking about it will ruin the feeling, so he just stays, and very far away he registers the dim pain, the feeling of yet another body up against him, then inside him. But really what he feels is that _bed_ , not the bed from his apartment now but a narrow, softer bed from long before that. Steve is here in this bright room, but he’s also _there_ , lying wrapped up and sick in linen sheets. But this time there are no painful or unpleasant instruments in his memories; Steve is not going to think about anything like that this time, now there’s just _rest_ , and someone is there to take care of him too, a cool hand on his feverish forehead, warding off the chills and the pain in his body.

It's okay to be there like this, because what's happening to him is not so bad this time. Cooke is going mercifully slowly: the same tentative movements that Rumlow had made when he had started, although somewhat different, as if Cooke is testing for something other than a pain reaction from Steve. Whatever it is, this time Steve just… doesn’t feel as much. He is in a bed, he is in _his_ bed. There is a hand on his forehead.

And then someone giggles, and Steve is jolted out of his comfort like being pulled out of the sheets into the cold air.

He lifts his head—no one is touching his head, of course, not really, no one’s wiping the sweat off his forehead or helping him at all—and turns to look over his shoulder. Sees Cooke’s bare stomach and chest over his own naked hips, sees his own skin still red there from where Rollins had grabbed him. Sees the other three men, off to one side. But all of that seems like nothing because Steve also notices that—

He is hard.

His erection is pushing up against his own stomach, moving slightly with every one of Cooke’s gentle, measured thrusts.

Even as that sinks in, Cooke’s hand snakes down around Steve’s hip, wet and ticklish, to grab his cock, and he pats Steve’s thigh with his other hand. Steve blinks, breath hitching as a shudder goes through him. It's the same feeling he had before, of something being disturbed deep in him, like the movement of an object under the water. It's hard to think, though, hard to do anything: Cooke’s fingers tighten around him, the grip firm enough to make Steve suck in a surprised breath.

“There we go,” Cooke says above him, and he works his fist up and down. His whole palm is wet too—he must have put more lube on it at some point—and every movement makes a wet meaty sound that would make Steve blush even more if such a thing was physically possible.

Cooke speaks again, under his breath, but it’s still loud enough for everyone to hear. “Doing good, buddy. Knew you’d be a team player.”


	6. Chapter 6

Steve doesn’t know how to respond. His mouth tastes like blood and salt: some of the sweat from his face has gotten inside. He can’t help another involuntary shudder. His skin is still covered in goosebumps under the sweat.

Off to the side, Barnett snorts. “You’re suspiciously good at this, Cooke,” he says.

“Yeah, what of it,” Cooke says. “Wanna risk a discrimination lawsuit?”

Barnett laughs again. Cooke keeps up the slick movement of his hand, measured and careful. “That good?” he asks Steve.

It’s more than good. It still hurts—Cooke is still inside him, even if he’s barely moving—but Steve hasn’t been touched like this in a long time, and the steady pressure inside adds an entirely new layer to it, a warm urgent glow that seems to spread all the way up Steve’s chest and down to his knees. He could ignore it, of course, he'd be able to do that; he could focus his mind on something else, he could—

He doesn’t. He looks down at his hands resting on the floor, enough to see just a slight tremble in both of them, and then closes his eyes instead. Cooke keeps stroking him, back and forth and faster now, and Steve doesn’t try to stop the jerking movement of his own hips in response. Cooke doesn’t seem to mind that he’s been thrown off his rhythm; he just works Steve in his hand with a thoughtfulness that’s almost like kindness.

“Yeah," he says softly. “Good, isn’t it.”

Steve nods without thinking into the darkness, his hips thrusting forward harder into Cooke’s welcoming hand. It’s awful, the sounds that hand is making, it’s awful how Steve must look, but the very shame of it seems to feed into the need growing deep in his belly, makes it more desperate, spiraling. He can feel it all over now, spreading through his body like blood. He feels like he’ll choke.

“Ready to come with a cock in your ass?”

Steve’s eyes snap open. He knows, somewhere, that he should answer, talk back, but he can’t; nothing but a broken, hurt sound comes out of his mouth, almost inaudible under the fast slick noises and the new laughter around him which rises and rises and Steve comes, shaking and shaking until he collapses forward, falling down onto his elbows, his forehead pressed against the fabric spread over the floor.

His breath is gone, ripped away from him, pleasure cutting ice-cold through his body. It feels like falling. It feels like dying again.

Steve stays still, gasping, his brain gray and fuzzy and blank, and when he comes back to himself the laughter is still going, and so is Cooke.

Harder now, the gentleness from before gone, and Steve’s whole body feels like it’s been hit with an electrical current, all of him tight and painful. It hurts, but he holds still and doesn’t move, the sweat on his face soaking into the canvas dropcloth beneath it, his semen dripping down off his stomach. The odor of it sharp in his nose, smelling of back alleys and his own dark bedroom at night, alone with himself.

Cooke finishes, finally, the sensation raw and awful inside him.

Someone is still laughing, or maybe Steve can just still hear it from before, he doesn’t know. He’s breathing deeply still, but his chest aches and heaves like not enough air can get in. The floor feels unsteady under him, as if it’s going to give out just like his arms had, concrete breaking apart like a sheet of ice. Like whatever Steve felt before is finally coming to the surface, and it hurts, what is down there _hurts_ , and—

Rumlow saves him.

He’s kneeling down next to Steve, a hand cupped around the back of Steve's head, fingers running forward through his wet hair, cool against Steve’s overheated skin. He rolls Steve gently onto his back, leans over him and presses a hand against his cheek. Despite the bruises that must still be there from being hit before, the touch doesn’t hurt. Steve still feels broken open, but he feels his breath steadying.

“Don’t mind them, Cap,” Rumlow says. “They don’t mean anything by laughing. It’s just seeing someone like you like this.”

Steve swallows, focusing his eyes. He is too exhausted to pretend not to care what Rumlow means. “…like me?”

“The Captain America thing. The hero thing. It’s something new to see you in this scenario. Like seeing your parents naked. They’re just nervous about it.” He shrugs, reassured and casual. “They’re idiots.”

Steve blinks up at him, turns his gaze to look at the men sitting in the lawn chairs.

“Sorry,” Barnett says.

Steve looks up at Rumlow, then back at Barnett. “It’s okay,” he says finally. 

Rumlow moves his hand to run his fingers through Steve’s hair again, grimacing slightly. “Anyone got any more of those wet wipes?”

“We're out,” Rollins says.

“Wait, I brought towels,” Cooke says, sounding eager. “Let me find ‘em.”

He does, and then Rumlow is cleaning the rest of the sweat and blood off Steve’s face with what appears to be a bath towel. It's not comfortable. The floor is cold under his back and that heater is still blowing air down on them, and his ass feels like he’s never going to be able to sit down again and his chest still hurts and he aches all over. But then Rumlow sets aside the towel, and lays his hand against Steve’s forehead, smiles.

“There you go, all clean,” he says, admiring, like Steve is a beautiful piece of artwork he has just completed. Steve can smell his aftershave again. His hand is still on his forehead.

 _How does he know,_ thinks Steve _,_ but it doesn’t matter. Steve manages to grunt something along the lines of _thank you_ , and Rumlow grins down at him for a moment longer, tracing a finger along one of the healing cuts on Steve’s face. Then he looks up.

“Last one,” he says. “ _Gentle_. No bullshit this time. Show some respect.”

It’s Barnett, of course; he's the only one left. Steve manages to refrain from grimacing.

Barnett doesn’t laugh again now, but he _does_ look positively excited as he shrugs off the thin jacket he’s wearing, sets it down beside his chair next to his cell phone. While he’s doing that, Rumlow digs his fingers in under Steve’s left shoulder, prompting him to sit up a little before he takes him by the upper arms and pulls him up until Steve’s shoulders and head are resting in his lap. Steve lets him do it, propping himself up a little on one elbow to make the movement easier.

 _“There_ ,” Rumlow murmurs to him and touches his forehead again, and—it’s okay. Everything still hurts, but it’s okay. This is the last one.

Barnett sits down in front of where Steve’s on his back, half in Rumlow’s lap now and still naked. He takes what seems like a long time undoing his pants and stroking himself, but Rumlow eases the uncomfortable wait by moving his fingers along the top of Steve’s head, massaging gently just behind his hairline in a way that makes Steve want to close his eyes and melt into the floor. The scratchy noise of his fingers against Steve’s scalp is loud, louder than the sounds of Barnett touching himself, louder after that than the wet, obscene sound of Barnett pushing inside him.

With Rumlow doing that, what Barnett is doing doesn’t matter so much, and it doesn’t matter so much that the new angle hurts even worse, that Steve is still too sensitive from the orgasm, that he is so much more exposed and open this way. Steve has that hand in his hair, and the warmth of Rumlow’s skin on his upper back through the fabric of his pants, and it’s enough.

In any case, Barnett doesn’t last long: after only a few minutes he changes his grip on Steve’s legs to something even more awkward, and starts to drive himself in deeper. Steve sets his jaw and waits. It’s finally about to be over.

But then Barnett says: “Shit, almost forgot I was the last one!” and Steve clenches his fists against the floor at the sharp yanking pain as Barnett pulls out of him.

The next part happens quickly: Barnett's up on his knees between Steve’s legs, angling himself over him, his fist working along his cock. Steve twitches back on instinct when Barnett leans forward, but Rumlow is right there behind him, holding him in place, and Barnett—

Oh.

Steve has seen this happen on some of Rumlow’s phone videos, as well.

He closes his eyes. Most of it hits him on his stomach and chest and not his face, at least.

Rumlow’s hands are firm on him now, one cupped around his forehead and the other holding his shoulder. More of the liquid splatters on Steve’s skin, warm, mixing with what’s left of his own emission.

Steve doesn’t move. He doesn’t want to open his eyes. Rumlow’s hand is cool on his forehead, stroking, steady. It’s good that Steve doesn’t have to move.

He only opens his eyes when he hears a faint clicking noise somewhere above him.

He looks up: Barnett is up holding the same cell phone he’d put down earlier. Steve blinks, and there’s another clicking noise from the cell phone's camera, and then another.

He feels himself shiver. The liquid all over his torso is already going cold.

But Rumlow is there, is still holding him, still here for him. This time Steve just looks up at Rumlow, and even with this upside-down view of his face, his smile is enough to make the shivering almost stop.

“You with me, Cap?” he says, and when Steve nods in confirmation, he says: “You did it.” His smile is genuinely impressed. “We actually did it.”

He looks so proud, almost awed, and after several long seconds of struggle, Steve forces himself to reciprocate the expression. He smiles back up at him.

Rumlow grins wider, and taps Steve lightly on the cheek with the heel of his palm. “Amazing work, champ,” he says, then looks up at the others. “Let’s hear it for Captain America!”

Everyone cheers, loud. Steve tries to keep smiling. Rumlow bends down and kisses his forehead. And then, to his surprise, he tilts Steve’s head back toward him, and kisses him on the lips. It’s—

It’s happening, that’s all he can really tell at this point. Rumlow’s mouth tastes like beer and his skin is scratchy with stubble and afterwards, when he pulls away, Steve just smiles shakily in confusion.

Rumlow grins again, pulling back. “Let’s get you a drink, bud,” he says.

It’s less difficult for Steve to smile once Rumlow has helped him sit up again, and Rumlow fusses over him with another bath towel, wiping up the worst of the filth on his body, and gives him yet another one to cover himself up with. Then they all help him up, one man with an arm around his shoulders, another patting his back. Steve still could have stood up by himself, despite the remaining mess and the discomfort, but it’s nice that they helped him.

He nods at Rumlow as he gives him a final squeeze on his arm and then pulls away. He has made it through. It’s okay. Steve is okay. It’s over, and the floor is still there under him. A drink bottle is pushed into his hand, the glass cold like ice.

“To STRIKE,” someone says, and there’s drinking, and Steve drinks, and someone else hugs him, and the cool liquid in his mouth is nice, washing out the last of the blood-and-sweat taste. The nervousness he had sensed among the men earlier is gone now, replaced with the type of unrestrained celebration that Steve has only seen after successful missions. The focus is on _him_ though, now, and Steve will do a good job of accepting that focus, just like he’s worked his way through everything else tonight.

Barnett pushes his way closer to him from somewhere, his cell phone out of sight now, and hooks a friendly arm around Steve’s neck.

“I fucking love this team, man,” he says, and with his other arm he raises the beer bottle he's holding. “How fucking lucky are we, guys?" he says, looking around at the others. “ _Two-for-one dead American hero special!”_

There is a sudden silence in the room.

No one talks. The other three men are all staring at Steve and Barnett; only the heater in the ceiling continues to make any noise.

Then Cooke sighs loudly, and Rumlow says: “Barnett, _for fuck’s sake_.”

Steve looks at Rumlow, then back at Barnett, frowning. He doesn’t know what they’re talking about, why Rumlow has the look on his face he only gets when he’s silently wishing someone dead, or why Barnett is suddenly going white.

“Your mouth is going to get us all fucking killed one day,” Rumlow says to Barnett, and Steve looks at him and raises his eyebrows questioningly, but Rumlow just shrugs. “Let’s get the Cap another beer, all right?” he says, smiling now. “It’s his big night. We gotta spoil the man.”

“Hell yeah,” says Cooke, a bit too eagerly, and Rollins claps Steve very hard on the back and then goes to fetch him a bottle.

No one else seems to dwell on Barnett’s comment after that, so Steve just shakes his head, takes the new bottle he’s given, and lets it go. It’s nothing _that_ important, clearly, and maybe now that Steve is one of them, they’ll let him know soon enough.


	7. Epilogue

Rumlow has a headache.

It has already been a very long plane ride, in the back of a _very_ small plane, and there’s still a long way to go. And yes, this is one of those rare STRIKE missions where Rumlow _isn’t_ obligated to drag Rogers or Romanoff along, and one of those even rarer missions where he has someone _far_ more fun to play around with instead.

But he’s sitting next to Barnett in the aircraft's shitty sidewall seating, and right now Barnett won’t stop talking to the new recruit who’s sitting on Barnett's other side—Rumlow doesn’t even remember the new guy’s name, just some poor young bastard who’s only recently been sucked into Hydra's clutches and hardly knows what the hell he is doing—and it is making this interminable flight seem even longer.

“…then the soldier actually went and _complained_ to Pierce afterwards one time.” Barnett’s tone is bragging, but there is an edge to it: Barnett is scared of Pierce, Rumlow knows, and the kid knows that the complaint he is talking about could have been the end of him. He is covering up that fear right now with overblown enthusiasm. Barnett puts on a high mocking voice that sounds absolutely nothing like the soldier. “ _Oh Pierce, Pierce, make them stop, my little faggot ass just can’t take it!_ Isn’t that right, soldier? Didn’t you say that?”

The soldier is sitting opposite them, across the center aisle of the plane but still close enough that Rumlow could reach over and touch his leg if he wanted to. He stares at Barnett over the top of his black mask, an expression of guarded uncertainty on his face.

“What did Pierce say?” the new recruit asks from next to Barnett. He sounds nervous, and he looks like he wishes he could speak quietly, but the noise of the plane’s engine doesn’t allow it.

Barnett laughs. He speaks with certainty, even though of course he could only have found out what Pierce said secondhand. “Pierce just went with it. Told him, _don’t worry, soldier, I won’t let them do that to you again. I promise_.”

“So you can’t... anymore…?” The new kid says, looking between Barnett and the masked hulking soldier opposite them and then back again. Christ, he is not that bright. Hydra’s standards must really be dropping.

Barnett laughs, savoring his chance to explain. “We _can_ , idiot. We can do whatever we _want_ to him once the mission is over. The soldier doesn’t fucking remember! You can promise him a trip to fucking Disneyland and he’ll believe you. He’ll wake up next time and never even know you led him on.”

The plane shudders and rattles through a patch of turbulence; Rumlow's head throbs. Across from them, the soldier is still following the other two men's conversation, looking like a person who is watching a very important foreign movie with half of the subtitles missing. He doesn’t yet have the righteously-pissed-off expression he gets when he’s actually on a mission and in his element, and the mild confusion that’s on his face instead is almost endearing.

“Hey, soldier!” Barnett calls to him, and the look of confusion dissolves as the soldier fixes his eyes on him.

Barnett says: “You wanna go to Disneyland after this? If we do a good job?”

The soldier looks back at him, a furrow in his brow. He plainly has no idea what Disneyland is, and something in him clearly suspects that it’s a trick question. He turns his head to look at Rumlow, who offers no explanation, then back at Barnett and the new guy, and then back at Rumlow, looking helpless.

This is about the point where Rumlow would usually show the soldier mercy and tell Barnett to shut up, but he’s tired and his head hurts.

The soldier looks back at Barnett yet again, and does what has been ingrained into him over the years as a way of causing himself the least pain: he chooses the answer that he thinks the other person wants. He nods.

Barnett guffaws, as if he’s just won some kind of intellectual battle. “Sure, we’ll do that. We’ll do that just for you, okay? Take you on all the rides. Get you some fucking balloons or some shit. How does that sound?”

The soldier stares and then nods again, and Barnett looks fucking orgasmic. He’s the center of attention, _and_ he gets to be the Hydra tour guide, introducing the cyborg to the new guy. Christ, he can be a smug asshole at times.

And apparently he's still not done, and is also interpreting Rumlow's _I need to find some strong painkillers_  silence and posture as approval: he keeps going. "Hey, soldier?" he says.

The soldier clearly wants Barnett to shut up even more than Rumlow does, but he keeps his eyes on him.

Barnett elbows the new kid next to him with a _watch this_ expression, then leans forward, across the narrow center aisle of the plane and toward the soldier, staring directly into those dead blue eyes. _“I fucked Steve Rogers.”_

The soldier looks back at him. He doesn’t blink. Even with the mask covering the lower half of his face, it’s clear that he is frowning.

“That’s right. I fucked Captain America while you were asleep, and he fucking _loved_ it, he was fucking begging for—”

He stops right there, because Rumlow has smacked him across the side of the head.

Barnett sways with the impact and then turns on him, eyes flashing, furious but in a muted way, because the kid’s not that brave; he’ll only act like an asshole toward people who he knows won’t fight back.

“Are you fucking retarded?” Rumlow spits. “Don’t mention that name to him.”

Barnett looks at him wide-eyed, shrinking back in the direction of the kid on his other side. “I thought they said he couldn’t remem—”

 _For fuck’s sake,_ Rumlow thinks. There aren’t many rules when it comes to their jobs, considering, but _don’t goad the asset into trying to remember_ is one of them. And it shouldn’t even _need_ to be one of those rules. It should be obvious. It should be like “don’t get inside an industrial microwave” or “don’t play Russian roulette with a semi-auto pistol.”

But his head hurts too much to say any of that. He rubs his forehead, digging his fingers in above the brow where it hurts the most. “Just shut up,” he says instead. “Shut the fuck up.”

Barnett does. He’s clearly pissed at Rumlow for ruining his moment in front of the new guy, but he just sinks back against the plane’s cabin wall with a posture that might as well be cowering. It’s pathetic. Hell, sometimes he’d rather deal with _Rogers_ than with this guy. 

Rumlow leans his head back against the smooth surface behind him, closes his eyes for a bit. When he opens them, he sees that across the aisle, the soldier is now looking at him. He looks like he might still be frowning under his mask.

“Don’t worry about that idiot,” Rumlow says to him. Barnett can still hear him, of course, even over the engine noise, but he doesn't give a fuck. “He’s just making shit up. And we really will give you a nice reward. Not Disneyland. But we’ll give you something.”

The soldier nods. He trusts Rumlow. He always does.

Barnett stays quiet, thank Christ, for the rest of the flight, and the soldier goes back to staring into empty space like he usually does when he’s not required to pay attention to anything. By the time they arrive at their destination, Rumlow is distracted enough with unloading and planning that he can mostly forget about his headache, and Barnett is busy with different bullshit too. Everyone forgets all about the conversation, the new guy turns out to be a small fraction less dumb than Rumlow had thought, and the soldier performs well.

And near the end of the mission, when a stray bullet from the soldier’s rifle wings off the edge of a metal panel and hits Barnett in such a way as to cause his very permanent retirement from the STRIKE team, it’s just a coincidence. Doing it deliberately would be against his programming, and anyway, not even the Winter Soldier can control a ricochet like that. It’s simply not possible.

No one else ever mentions what'd happened with Steve Rogers in front of him again, though. Just to be sure. They’re not fucking stupid.

 

 


End file.
